


Three Little Words

by Byrcca



Series: Stuff and Nonsense [8]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode: s05e09 Thirty Days, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 12:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16085873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byrcca/pseuds/Byrcca
Summary: A quiet moment during Tom’s thirty-first night.





	Three Little Words

Three words. Three little words that were sweeter than anything he’d ever heard. Sweeter than _I love you,_ though he’d longed to hear it, especially from her. Longed to know if what he felt in his heart was answered in hers. And when she’d told him, he’d almost wept at the timing, screamed at the fates for screwing him over once again. For dangling the one thing that he wanted before his eyes only to, seemingly, snatch it away. 

Three words better than _You’ve been released_ because he hadn’t been, not really. He’d traded nine months for seventy years, commuted now to thirty, and a pair of wings. Two pips. But what was freedom, anyway, and what was incarceration? He was free to choose his meals, so long as he had the rations. Free to fill his spare time as he wished, as long as the holodeck was unoccupied. Free to leave the ship, with his captain’s permission and provided there was an away mission or shore leave. Free to make his own decisions, encouraged by his rebel girlfriend. Ordered to suffer the consequences. 

He couldn’t regret it.

Three words better even than _I forgive you,_ because by the time absolution had come, _if_ it had come in that lost letter, he’d no longer desired it, and it had come from the wrong source: he still hadn’t quite forgiven himself. Really, sitting on the sofa in the dark at three in the morning, he was no psychological mystery.

Three words far better than _What about Tom Paris?_ which were four words anyway, because though Captain Proton was heroic he wasn’t real and real life held few heros. And besides, he, Tom, wasn’t a captain, wasn’t even a lieutenant, junior grade anymore. Two pips, now one, and the weight of his captain’s disappointment bringing it all back, threatening to crush him.

She stood silhouetted in the bedroom doorway wearing his old, faded red tee shirt and little else, arm outstretched, palm up, hand open. She said his name, “Tom,” in her soft voice, cajoling, understanding, lifting him from his reverie, bringing him back to here and to now and to what was important: her. Them. 

“Come to bed.”

Her hand outstretched, reaching toward him, offering love and acceptance and absolution in those three words.

He rose from the couch and took it.

***


End file.
